On 29 Jan 2008, at 00:38, Thomas McCabe wrote:
Check out Ramachandran:
"Without a doubt it is one of the most important discoveries ever
made about
the brain, Mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for
biology.
They will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of
mental
abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious..."
Mirror neurons *do* seem like an important discovery in cognitive
science, but they're specific to humans (and other animals with
complex nervous systems), not to intelligences in general. The general
principle (look at another system and copy its behavior) can be
applied just as easily to purely electronic systems as physical ones.
Remember COPYCAT
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_%28software%29)?
Sorry I was under the impression that an electronic system is sort of
physical, too.
Perhaps, the question is what kind of physical system becomes relevant.
Electronic particles ... blabla
Read Sandra Blakeslee - The Body has a Mind of its Own - also just
out. [She
did Jeff Hawkins before].
The author is a professional writer, not a scientist, and has no
published papers that I can find. To quote from the front page of the
book's website (http://www.thebodyhasamindofitsown.com):
"Your body has a mind of its own. You know it's true. You can feel it,
you can sense it, even though it may be hard to articulate. You know
your body is more than just a meat-vehicle for your mind to cruise
around in, but how deeply are mind, brain and body truly interwoven?"
This is clearly 'pop sci' writing, probably with little technical
content.
Ha, technical content. Now we're touching an interesting area.
What is this technical content, please. Science does not equal
technic(al). Non science ditto.
If Blakeslees's text is non-technical as contrary to the definition of
technical below, then it could be quite a good reading for a
scientist, it might be interesting, because this scients might want to
either disprove something or
look into the content of this book and find something interesting
without dismissing it as not peer-reviewed or that the person has not
published enough. By the way, we all have to start from somewhere.
Silly me, I thought that good scientists do not dismiss everything that
does not immediately fit into ones research (or is not found on a hit
list of super publishers)
Thought this definition from OED (Oxford English Dictionary) is
helpful:
3. a. Belonging or relating to an art or arts; appropriate or
peculiar to, or characteristic of, a particular art, science,
profession, or occupation; also, of or pertaining to the mechanical
arts and applied sciences generally, as in technical education, or
technical college, school, university.
Gudrun
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- Tom
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fbefc6
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